Nadine Gordimer - None to Accompany Me

Among the casualties of violence listed in the newspaper is a clerk in the employ of the Legal Foundation, Oupa Sejake, who has died of complications resulting from an injury received when the Foundation’s vehicle was hijacked.

It was only decent that the Foundation be represented at the funeral. Because the poor young man had been more or less her assistant, Mrs Stark would be the obvious choice. Lazar Feldman volunteered to accompany her and do the driving, since muscles torn by the bullet’s passage through her calf felt the strain of depressing a brake pedal. But the day before they were to leave he developed that perfect alibi for opting out of anything and everything, virus flu. While other colleagues were avoiding one another’s eyes and suggesting someone ought to take his place, she said — without having any idea of whom she might have in mind — no need to worry, she would not have to go alone. Perhaps she had been thinking Ivan might come with her; it would give them a chance to talk, reopen the secret passages between intimates that have to be unsealed each time after absence. The first week of his visit had belonged entirely to him and Ben — between meetings at the Foundation with major funders from Sweden and Holland and running to the hospital, she barely had had time for a meal with her son. Ah — but she remembered Ben mentioning, with pride that drew down the corners of his mouth, that Ivan was so well thought of internationally in the banking world that the Development Bank had invited him as a special guest to participate in talks with a representative of the IMF, to take place next day.

Another claim of life while the process of dying was moving to its close was the hearing in the Supreme Court of the farmer Tertius Odendaal’s appeal against a judgment allowing an informal housing settlement to be established on the land known as Odensville acquired from him by the Provincial Administration. Zeph Rapulana was present when the judges dismissed the appeal; one of the Foundation’s lawyers who had accompanied him while she was preoccupied with the Swedes and the Hollanders brought a note: ‘Vera, we’ve won, this time we’ve shut the door in his face.’

This other conclusion, of a process that had seemed to have little chance of success, bubbled a clear spring through her preoccupations. Zeph Rapulana had a base in the city, now, backyard cottage in a suburb — his success with the Odensville affair had brought him to the attention of a housing research project which employed him as adviser. On the telephone they both talked at once: Vera wanted to know exactly what the judge had said, how Odendaal reacted — and it became quite natural for her to go on to suggest, look, why don’t you come with me tomorrow, we could talk. He knew about the death of the young man who had been shot, as she was, on the road: —If it’ll be any help to you.—

The stand of eucalyptus. Then approaching, a face awaiting, demanding recognition: it happened, it happened, it happened here, the death began here — the place on the road where Oupa, sitting beside her as this other man, Zeph, sits beside her now, drew up and called through the window, Brother.

— This is where they were.—

Pointing out a landmark, that’s all. The only being with whom what happened there is shared has disappeared. But there is a counter-balance in the presence beside her; with him is shared something else, living, that could not be shared with anyone else. From the day Odendaal had closed the door in their faces; from the statement, the threat (never to be discussed between them) Don’t be afraid, Meneer Odendaal, you won’t be harmed, your wife, your children — to the nine dead, to the judge’s words dismissing Odendaal’s appeal, the door shut in Odendaal’s face — this single return of land to its people was their right, Rapulana’s and hers, to quiet elation. Like the feeling between lovers continuing in the presence of the pain of others, it showed no disrespect to the dead. Out of companionable silences she let her thoughts rise aloud now and then. — Why is it that more can be done for the dead than the living? I’m on my way to his home, his wife, now, but neither I nor anyone else went to fetch her while he was at least still alive, although he might not have known she was there. There was no proper address to send a message, a telegram, no telephone, no one knew how to get in touch with her short of driving there, but once he died — suddenly someone at the office knew someone else who was a friend of his, the Soweto grape-vine was followed, there was a way found to get a message to her: Oupa dead. Just that.—

— You don’t think he’d let her know about the attack. — I don’t know. And would she read the papers? Unlikely. Of course, someone might have heard from the driver of the cattle truck and passed the news on to her. Who can say? It’s hard for someone like me to imagine the feelings of a woman like her — living as she has to. You’ve known so many … I suppose it doesn’t strike you … She gets his body back. And that seems so important. The dead body? She didn’t show much enthusiasm when he walked in that day. But someone came specially — from her — to arrange the transport, the money for the funeral. All the things that distance and poverty and … I don’t know— acquiescence in the state of things? — couldn’t manage before become possible when there’s so little purpose left. But I suppose it’s your custom.—

He watched the mealie fields approach and turn away, cleaved by the road. — We have too many graves and too few houses for the living.—

Vera followed the ritual of the funeral without understanding any comfort it could bring to the wife. She was dressed in a polka-dot skirt and jacket that she endured like a tight pair of shoes (an outfit bought by her husband from a street vender in the city?), the skin of her stunned face peeled raw by tears. The children were wearing white socks and polished school shoes. The gangling boy who (that day, that day) hadn’t returned from school held the hand of a two- or three-year-old who stared down curiously into the pit of dank-smelling earth ready to receive his father. There was singing, of great beauty, from these women left behind, and when they wept one of them took Vera’s arm because with the bullet that passed through her leg she was part of the son they mourned and she wept, with them, for the horrible metamorphosis revealed by Intensive Care.

The company trooped back to the house. She felt impatient with herself, confused. — Oupa. Why was he named that? Grandfather, old man, and he’s dead before thirty. Why do you name children ‘old man’ for god’s sake? — Zeph smiled down at her. — Something to do with authority. You take the Afrikaans word for a respected man and it gives — wha’d’you say — confers power on the child. You give him the strength of a baas. —

At the Washing of the Hands in tin basins set out by women he told her she was expected to say a few words to the wife and company. But apart from their own language they understood only Afrikaans, the language of the whites they worked for in that district, and hers was court-room Afrikaans; she did not have the right words for this occasion. — You speak to them.—

A mild reproach. — How do I know what you want to say?—

— I want to say I don’t know what to say.—

— No, come on.—

— Really.—

— They want to know how he died, of what sickness, what happened at the attack, that he was a soldier in Umkhonto, that he was well-thought-of at work, that he was a good man who cared only about his family although he was far away—

— There, you know it all. Tell them you’re saying it in their language for me.—